Chapter Ten
Tiernan’s knee was hardly worth the fuss the child put up over it.
When Nicola brought the twins back to their fourth floor apartments and gently tended the child’s scraped knee, she had to shake her head over the fit the child was putting up.
Janet held the boy and soothed him while Mam eased the sting of the wound and promised to bring him some treats from the kitchen.
That seemed to ease Tiernan’s pain and she left him cuddling with the servant woman while she made her way down to the lower floors.
Headed down the narrow spiral stairs that led to the entry level, she passed by Raven and Liesl on their way up.
It was mid-morning and the girls were carrying fresh linens and freshly baked rye bread and salty butter for the boys to eat.
Nicola told them where she was going, to seek something tempting from the kitchens for Tiernan, and instructed the young women to bathe the boys while she was gone.
The young women agreed and continued up the stairs, but not before Nicola saw a very big love bite on the top of Raven’s left shoulder.
It then occurred to her that Liesl appeared somewhat disheveled and weary as well.
Thoughts lingering on the two young women, Nicola continued down the steps.
She was trying to recollect when last she saw them.
As always, they slept in her apartments and she had seen them when they had all gone to bed the night before.
But this was the first time she had seen them all morning.
Janet had been in the room when she’d awoken but the two younger girls had not.
The love bite on Raven’s shoulder told her where the women had spent their evening.
Knights. She had been concerned from the onset that dark and lovely Raven and impressionable Liesl would fall victim to le Bec’s men.
Truth be told, she believed the girls had been bedded by some of Gaylord’s men, too, so it wasn’t simply le Bec’s knights who were using them for comfort.
She’d said something to Gaylord about it, once, months ago before he died, and he had simply told her to keep her mouth shut, so she had.
But with Gaylord gone and her relationship with Kenton much better than it had ever been with her husband, she intended to say something to him about it.
She didn’t want bastards running around Babylon.
They had enough to deal with without the added burden of children to unwed girl-servants.
Indeed, it was something to discuss with Kenton, sooner rather than later.
Although she intended to head to the kitchen to see if old Hermenia had something to tempt Tiernan and cheer him up, her thoughts were lingering on Kenton and his knights.
She knew he was around, somewhere nearby as he always was, and she thought to seek him out before ending up at the kitchen.
There was business on her mind but the truth was that she simply wanted to see Kenton again.
Her thoughts were never far from him these days, his sweetly awkward flirtation and his kindness towards her and her boys.
She was quite smitten with the man, if she were to admit such a thing, neglecting the fact that he was her captor.
That word, that situation, didn’t seem to exist any longer.
The days since their visit to Manchester had seen to that.
Things were more wonderful at Babylon these days than they had ever been, at least as far as her happiness.
For the first time in her life, she was actually happy.
With thoughts of handsome Kenton on her mind, Nicola was heading for the keep entry with the intention of looking outside for Kenton when voices from Gaylord’s solar caught her attention.
The door wasn’t quite closed and there were multiple male voices coming forth.
Nicola thought she heard Kenton’s voice and moved closer, timidly, wondering if she could interrupt their conversation or if she should simply wait for another time.
In order to do that, she listened to a few snips of the dialogue to see if they were seriously discussing something or if they were simply talking about something inconsequential.
She soon found out.
“… was married to Gaylord Thorne, an enemy of Henry, for many years. She knows his allies and mayhap she even knows what they have discussed. There could be treachery afoot that I do not know about. I cannot beat any information out of the woman. It is in my best interest to be gentle with her in order to discover what she knows. Hell, already I know that it is impossible to threaten the woman into submission. I have tried. Now, I am trying another tactic.”
It was Kenton, discussing her with as much emotion or enthusiasm as one would discuss the enemy.
The enemy. Stunned, Nicola moved back, away from the door, her mind reeling and her heart sinking.
With Kenton’s words rolling over and over in her head, she stumbled away from the solar door, moving blindly for the entry and rushing from the keep.
As she ran, she could only think of one thing – he spoke of me as if I am nothing to him but his enemy.
I am the enemy!
In a humiliated daze, she found herself out in the inner ward, surrounded by enemy soldiers, who were all looking at the lady of the keep with some interest. They all knew who she was and they all knew that le Bec had been keeping company with her, which was why no one moved to speak with her in any fashion.
To do so would incur the wrath of le Bec.
But Nicola wasn’t aware of what the soldiers were thinking, nor did she care.
She passed through the gate that separated the inner ward from the kitchen yard, immediately hit by the smell of roasting pig.
Hermenia and a couple of the soldiers had killed one of the remaining young pigs and the scent was heavy in the yard.
The old cook was stirring one of the three big pots of stew that they seemed to have going at any given time.
Since their return from Manchester, the pots would hold different things – porridge to fill empty bellies, or beans and pork fat, or even mutton stew.
There was always something going and the smells were often overwhelming in the cold, heavy air.
Nicola came to a halt just inside the gate, watching old Hermenia stir a pot full of provisions she and Kenton had brought back from Manchester.
The mere remembrance of that day, that lovely day when he spoke so sweetly to her, now brought a knot to the pit of her stomach.
Now, the shock of his words was wearing off and the realization was hitting.
It was true, all of it. She stood there a moment, sinking further and further into despair.
The reality was staggering – she was smitten with a man who had only been using her.
She couldn’t even begin to describe the desolation she felt, the sheer anguish at her own idiocy.
Why hadn’t she realized that before that Kenton was only using her?
How could she have been so foolish? He’d played upon her emotions and, like a silly woman, she had let him.
She had agreed most readily to everything he said or did as of late, his tall and dark handsomeness blinding her to the truth of the man’s character.
He was her enemy and she had all but given him the key to her heart.
Dear God, why hadn’t she seen any of this before?
No one had touched her heart, ever, and for good reason.
Now, she knew without a doubt that all men were liars and abusers.
Gaylord abused her body but Kenton abused her soul.
Never again would she allow a man to betray her.
Never again would she be stupid to his true motives.
At that moment, something inside of Nicola died just a little bit, something warm and soft and loving. It died because she killed it.
She would not make the same mistake ever again.
Turning away from the sight of the food, she wandered back over to the stables where the animals were crowded in, eating grain and dried fruits as given to them by the stable servants.
Nicola wandered all the way to the back of the stable, into a stall where Tab’s pony was happily crunching oats, and sat heavily near the manger. The tears came then.
She wept all afternoon but when she finally emerged from the stables, it was with greater resolve than ever before. If Kenton thought he was going to use her, then he was sadly mistaken. It was she who now had a plan.
Kenton le Bec would not have the last laugh in all of this.
She would.
*
The evening feast was a fragrant and sticky affair, with so many men crowding into the great hall of Babylon that the air itself was not only warm, it was moist. Men were sweating because of the roaring blaze in the malfunctioning hearth, coughing as they ate with all of the smoke in the room.
But it was much better than the alternative, being out in the snowy February night.
Dark clouds had rolled in throughout the afternoon and as the sun set, a dusting of white powder began to fall.
The inner and outer wards still had dirty snow in them from the last snowfall, so the new snow was simply piling onto the dirty black mounds that were already there.
It made for wet and miserable conditions, so there were many men crowded inside the hall and inside the keep, trying to stay dry and warm.
Fortunately, there was enough food to feed them.
Hermenia and her help had a pork and bean stew that included carrots and parsnips, great chunks of grainy bread, butter, cheese, big slabs of fried, salty pig skin, tart apple pies with cinnamon and cloves and honey, and ultimately a good deal of warmed wine.